The Way of the Big D.L. / On Anger

"If one comes across a person who has been shot by an arrow, one does not spend time wondering about where the arrow came from, or the caste of the individual who shot it, or analyzing what type of wood the shaft is made of, or the manner in which the arrowhead was fashioned. Rather, one should focus on immediately pulling out the arrow.
- Shakyamuni, the Buddha

Lately I've been more self-reflective than usual. And I mean really self-reflective. That means questioning every emotion I'm feeling and trying to understand why I feel that way. Feelings like disappointment, bitterness, sadness, as well as happiness, contentment and compassion. It's probably all to do with my self-directed journey towards enlightenment (of some sort). My logic is, trying to understand where these emotions are coming from will hopefully lead me to a better understanding and knowledge of self, as well as others. Or just give me even more opportunities to be self-absorbed and talk about myself ;)

These days I find myself constantly reflecting on anger. What are the causes of anger and how do we overcome it? As you can see in my last post, I've dated and met a lot of winners in my life. The last one especially. I could and have gone on and on about how big of a loser he was, how he never deserved me but I've really been trying to let go of that hurt and anger.

While in some cases, anger can bring about positive change, as the Dalai Lama cites for example, anger at injustice can bring about feelings of love and compassion. But most of the time, anger is bad for you. It's self-consuming, clouds your judgment and turns 'rational' people into monsters. Maybe that's a little extreme for those who don't have crazy anger management issues but in any case, anger is usually unproductive and leads to feelings of hatred. By leaving feelings of anger unchecked, it can build over the years leading to not only emotional but physical problems. The awesome D.L. says to deal with anger means to challenge it, not vent or merely to avoid. He also says negative feelings such as anger can be combated with feelings such as patience and tolerance but I'll talk about that on another day.

Anger, like denial or projection, is one of the ways we protect ourselves, it can help to mask underlying feelings. I wanted to challenge my anger. I've come to realize that over the last few months, I've pretty much gotten over the guy (THANKFULLY), as in, I no longer miss him, I don't want to key his car or leave a flaming bag of poo at his door step. I think that is progress.

But over the last two weeks, for one reason or another, the anger has creeped back into my life. I guess it's always a process and I always come to the conclusion that the emotions I feel rarely have anything to do with the guy but with myself. When I think of all those things that he said and did that made him unworthy, I realize that I'm not angry at him, I could care less about him. Instead, I've become so angry at myself. And not only for the way I was with him, but with so many guys before him. What the fuck was I thinking? Was I that desperate that I needed attention from someone like him? How did I let that happen even when I knew EXACTLY how things really were? YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT, no wonder this happened to you. Thoughts like those constantly ream through my head, creating a hugeass roadblock.

That was really a long-winded way of saying that, despite my efforts to self-reflect and try and understand why I do the things I do in hopes of some positive change, I've been held back by my inability to forgive myself. That is not to say that the way I treated myself was alright and that it's okay for it to happen again. I definitely won't forget. But the anger at myself has definitely festered into self-hate (can you tell I love psycho babble?!) when my whole journey has been about self-love.

I realized all this on the TTC ride to work (seriously, where all the best thinking happens). It's like one of those breakthrough moments in therapy. How could I even begin my whole "love thyself" mission if I couldn't get over the hate? If I couldn't stop thinking of myself as a complete FOO. I might never really get to the root of why I began to think of myself as any less that I am, but if I really want to move on, I need to tell myself that I've made mistakes (or the same mistake over and over) and acted a fool but that doesn't mean it makes me incapable of being something different. Someone better.

Not forgiving myself. That is the arrow I need to pull out. What's yours?